From the January 1974 edition of Popular Mechanics:
I wonder if the Moog Source synthesizer (from 1981) was ever sold as a complete outfit including the main keyboard with “hand-carried ribbon-control and trigger that accompanies drum beats with notes or chords whose pitch varies according to intensity with which drum is struck”?
~Ben
I was nine years old in 1974. That’s when I received my first LED electronic calculator as a reward for getting really good grades that year. I still have it and it’s still working perfectly, it’s a TI SR-16. My mother later told me that it had cost $65 ! That was quite a bit of money back in those days (a whole month’s rent).
So that puts the original price tags of those synthesizers in perspective. $1495 for a Minimoog. Whew!
Now that 38 years later I finally got my hands on a Mini, I’m amazed at how well it still works.
They don’t make thing with this level of quality these days, especially not refrigerators… 
And it’s funny to think that electronic ignition system for cars was a new thing !
That “bug house for your Bug” was funny too… 
Thank for the link!
I love the groovy '70s names like syntha-sound. The ARP Odyssey being described as polyphonic is a bit of a stretch - yes it does play more than one note at a time so it’s technically correct. I suppose the term duophonic hadn’t entered the mainstream synth vocab yet.
I can’t believe an Odyssey and a pro soloist cost the same.
Interesting article. Check out that keyboard stand that the Model D is sitting on… I’d like to have a couple of those.
It’s interesting to me to read this article, and hear the synthesizer being talked about like it is meant to be used as means to emulate the sounds that are made by “real” (acoustic) instruments. Sure, there were a few comments suggesting you could make new sounds too, but it seems like the overarching selling point of synthesizers at the time was something like: “play any instrument on one keyboard”. Neat how synthesizers have come into their own identity over the years, and now when you flip the switch on a Moog people don’t expect to hear a trumpet- they expect to hear a synthesizer.
Oh, apparently Wendy didn’t “perform,” she “constructed.” Nice. Well, apparently that’s what the author thought of multitracking. It’s not real music, it’s just architecture.
This is the sad thing about synthesizers. They were originally intended to create sounds totally different from other sounds… sounds never heard… but those who marketed them recognized the monetary benefit of allowing the synthesizer to simply emulate. And THAT was the stuff that captured the interest of the general public who had no concept of or interest in having the ability to author sound.
Museslave, you reminded me of something that I had noticed when I discovered the Switched-on-Bach album. It was clear that Walter, hmm…Wendy, uh…W. Carlos had intended to create tonalities and timbres that were reminiscent of real acoustic instruments, but had managed to do that without trying to recreate them too faithfully, resulting in very interesting and inspired ones instead. That was a very refreshing departure from the usual “bleeps” and “twats” heard on records featuring the Moog Modular before that.
That was the real genius of W. Carlos. Not only recording a virtuoso multi-track performance of Bach’s work on the Moog, but creating (albeit with a lot of hard work and some help from Rachel Elkin) all those wonderful sounds on that mighty custom designed Moog Modular.
Wendy is Wendy. There is no point in drawing irrelevant attention to the change. She has been Wendy for decades, and the whole “Walter” deal was insisted upon by the record company. It was time to let that crap go decades ago. Why one of the most important composers in regard to the Moog synthesizer has to continually deal with these issues regarding something so irrelevant is beyond me.
While some of her offerings do seem to reference original instrumental timbres of Bach’s work, the body of the S-OB stuff was, irrespective of the possiblity of retroactive comparison to traditional instruments, intended to be comprised of new timbres.
What’s got into you, Marc ? You seem “edgy”, to say the least. Did you wake-up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or what ? My point was precisely to indicate that I don’t care at all if she was a man before. She could be an alien, for all I care. It is what she has done that interests me. Not who she sleeps with.
As for patches, Wendy herself has stated, on her “Well-tempered experiments” recordings, that she, and her long time associate and producer Rachel Elkind, were trying to come up with distinctive yet melodic and musical timbres that were inspired by real instruments to reflect Bach’s original parts intended for them. All the while carefully avoiding the tar pits of simply trying to clone them synthetically. I’d say that they’ve succeeded in spectacular ways.
On later albums with composition of her own, like the musical score for the film A Clockwork Orange, she explored uncharted territories in sound synthesis with some tonalities and timbres that didn’t have any resemblance with real acoustic instruments this time around. But despite being monumental works of art, one has to agree that it was a little less conventional and melodic at times than her earlier work on SOB.
The complete outfit retailed for $1900, which includes everything else I’ve already described (e.g. the ribbon controller).
~Ben
And your point being 
The ad states that the price of the Minimoog alone was $1495… And that the Mini-Outfit, including all the other stuff with it, was $1900, yes…